{"id":384890,"date":"2026-04-10T11:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/384890\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T11:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:10:08","slug":"a-staggering-sprawling-masterpiece-from-the-mind-of-cameron-picton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/384890\/","title":{"rendered":"a staggering, sprawling masterpiece from the mind of Cameron Picton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Careening and hallucinatory, it is fitting that My New Band Believe \u2013 the shapeshifting collective led by former Black Midi<\/a> bassist and occasional frontman Cameron Picton \u2013 originated in a fever dream. The band\u2019s name was one that lodged in his mind as he battled serious food poisoning while touring China with his former band in August 2023.<\/p>\n

From members of the sprawling experimental band caroline<\/a> to a 50-strong orchestra, the size of My New Band Believe\u2019s cast makes for remarkable sonic diversity. Their self-titled debut album is a mishmash of grand romantic sweeps and fragmented breakdowns, pianos, strings, woodwind, harpsichords and guitars that slam against each other constantly to keep momentum shifting.<\/p>\n

This scope is made even broader by the contexts Picton places those musicians in. An unaffectedly beautiful piano line on \u2018Love Story\u2019 was improvised in the clock tower of the St. Pancras station in London. On \u2018Actress\u2019, the orchestra are packed into a tiny room, and sees all of the string section\u2019s takes, mistakes and all, stacked on top of one another so that they become a teeming wave of noise.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of ambition that could result in a mess. Thankfully, by imposing the limitation that almost everything on the record should be acoustic, with the smallest possible amount of reverb, Picton ensures that the maximalism is tightly controlled. The way it constantly tries to press against those self-inflicted cast-iron boundaries \u2013 like the orchestra in that room \u2013 is one of the reasons it\u2019s so thrilling.<\/p>\n

Then, there is Picton himself, a dazzling instrumentalist. On \u2018Heart Of Darkness\u2019 alone, he flits between serpentine finger-picked guitar and blissed-out soul, envisaging a transatlantic communion between English folk great John Renbourn<\/a> and American soul legend Otis Redding<\/a>. To longstanding Black Midi fans such chops will come as no surprise. What\u2019s intriguing, though, is how much he shines as sole frontman.<\/p>\n

Lyrically, too, there\u2019s brilliance at work, Picton skipping between the perspectives of different characters, drawing out the intense moments of desire, lust, anger, bliss and despair that exist in intimate spaces. Sometimes these emotions dovetail with the music \u2013 the gentle domestic portrait on \u2018Love Story\u2019 set to strings that border on saccharine; the skittering rhythms that heighten the paranoid self-consciousness on \u2018In The Blink of an Eye\u2019 \u2013 and sometimes they\u2019re set in uneasy juxtaposition. There is a simmering violence under the quirky surface of \u2018Target Practice\u2019, for instance, a meditation on the ethics of assassination.<\/p>\n

Like its name that emerged within that 2023 fever dream, My New Band Believe\u2019s debut is an open-ended record, as ambitious as it is ambiguous. In less skilled hands it could easily fall apart under its own weight. In Picton\u2019s, however, it\u2019s a masterpiece.<\/p>\n

Details<\/p>\n

\"my<\/p>\n

Record label: Rough Trade
\nRelease date: April 10, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Careening and hallucinatory, it is fitting that My New Band Believe \u2013 the shapeshifting collective led by former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,131,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-384890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-indie","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}